There was a time when I would have thought that it was “selfish” to have this answer to this question. And when I thought that being that kind of “selfish” was a bad thing, something to be avoided. I used to think that being a good person meant being completely self sacrificing, to deny myself my own needs and wants and pleasures. And therefore my passions were always tied up in what I construed as other people’s needs and wants. It wasn’t a very healthy way to live.
Slowly, slowly, I’m starting to learn a different way of thinking about myself.
Selfishness can, of course, be a bad thing. This sort of selfishness is when someone takes away from other people for their own benefit. But selfishness can also take the form of assuming what other people want without asking them. Even though this looks like it’s giving and not selfish, it’s actually projecting one’s own needs on to someone else. In the process (at least for me), I’ve often ignored my own needs and wants. And in this way, I thought I was a good person. But I wasn’t. Because I wasn’t taking care of the most important person in my life: myself.
Now, I’m trying to learn about my own needs. And I’m trying to learn about myself, get to know myself better, figure out what my needs and interests are and give them to myself. This is my passion.
How am I going about fulfilling my passion? I take it easy on myself. This sounds like the opposite of passion, but I guess you could say that I’m passionate about taking it easy on myself. I check in with myself often. I let go of trying to be “perfect”. I pause a lot lately. I’ll take a deep breath and make sure that I am not skipping breaths. When I’m excited about something — an activity or a pursuit or learning something — I let myself pursue it but not the point of neglecting myself or being in pain. I try to extend myself grace.
Do I get it right every time? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
But my other passion is this: beginning again. Allowing myself to start over again and again and again as many times as is necessary.
Each new moment is exactly that: A. NEW. MOMENT.
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So, right now, that means spring is my favorite season. In Maryland it already feels a bit more like summer, hot and humid, the constant threat of thunderstorms, even though we are still ten days or so away from the summer solstice. The minutes of sunlight are still piling up on each side of the day. School is still in session, but the community pools are open. It would be easy for me to get caught up in either looking forward towards summer break or backwards to the cooler days of spring during this time of transition. But I’m putting a great deal of effort into being in the season I’m in — weatherwise and otherwise.
I learned a lesson about this just yesterday in my guitar lesson. I’ve been working the same piece of music for a while now — maybe as long as two or three months? — I’m not really sure. In any case, it’s been a challenging piece and the last few lessons, my teacher has worked with me with the same few trouble spots for a few weeks now. At the end of the lesson, she’s sent me off with some thoughts on how to work on those few measures. So at each practice, I will follow her suggestions and work on those few measures, practicing them over and over. And there certainly has been some improvement.
And yesterday she called me out. “You’ve been working on these other parts of the piece, haven’t you?” indicating the lines and measures that we hadn’t started working on during my lessons yet.
I laughed and wondered, “How did she know?“
I confessed that I had been. She also teaches my daughter and she told me that I’m just like her. There’s probably some truth to that. But when I talked to my daughter about it, she said that she has some favorite parts to pieces of music that she just really enjoys playing and so she plays those parts over and over.
That’s not what’s going on for me.
As I explained to my guitar teacher, I have it in my head that there’s some sort of deadline or like a “test” at the end and I start to get worried that I’m not going to have covered or practiced that part of the piece.
I know. There is no deadline. And that’s also exactly what I said to my teacher. “You’re type A,” she said.
We both had a bit of a laugh over the whole thing. The whole thing forced to me to examine and articulate some of these ridiculous thoughts and ideas that underlie how I’ve been approaching practicing guitar. And it also made me realize that I present as a Type A personality. And I realize that this is a survival/ defense mechanism that I built up in school and probably in life in general. It’s that I always feel like if I’m not three steps ahead, then I’m three steps behind and slipping even faster.
But in my heart of hearts, that’s not who I really am. It’s just how I’ve been presenting myself. It’s a coping strategy. I practiced those other sections of the music because I was worried I’d somehow be called upon to know the whole piece and I wouldn’t be prepared.
All of this for an activity that I’m partaking in supposedly “for fun.”
In the meantime, the few measures that my teacher suggested I practice aren’t really getting that much better. And the whole thing isn’t really that much fun. Or, at least, it’s definitely not as much fun as it could be if I just trusted the process. Just focus on the parts that my teacher told me to. No need to be a super student, to know the whole thing ahead of the class (by the way, there is no class, these are private lessons). I’ve been cramming all of the music into each week, each practice. And in this way of thinking, I’ve ended up not really knowing any of the music that well. I haven’t been giving each line, each measure, each note its space and time.
I’d like to be able to tell you that since this lesson and commensurate change in attitude, I’ve picked up the guitar and the whole thing has come together. That’s not true. This isn’t some neat little lesson with a change of attitude and a happy reward at the end. In fact, I haven’t even picked up the guitar since yesterday’s lesson. In part because that’s part of the lesson too. I’m doing all of this for fun so I don’t need to practice just to “prove” something to myself. And I also don’t need to “over practice”. I practice once a day for thirty to forty-five minutes. When I’m done, I’m done, I move on to something else. I don’t fixate and obsess and try to perfect it all.
So what does this have to do with my favorite season?
Like I said, my favorite season is the one I’m in. And being able to say that means that I don’t spend a lot of time looking forwards or looking backwards at the other seasons, which will inevitably come in their due time. Just as those other parts of the music will get their due focus and attention in their time. In the meantime, I’ll just live in the moment, the season, the measure, the notes I’m in.
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It’s Wednesday, which means that I’m going to include a brief summary of what I’ve been blogging about in this past week.
Let’s begin with last Thursday where I answered the prompt about my dream chocolate bar, which ended up being an impossible one because what’s the point of dreaming if it doesn’t transcend reality?
Friday was my shortest post yet about why I wouldn’t change my name.
Next up, I revealed who I spend most of my time with. (MY answer was unsurprising.)
A bit of silence. And then a discussion of why I shouldn’t actually feel awkward about speaking aloud by myself.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
A good life is a series of good moments, one after the other, strung together like pearls on a necklace. What makes a moment “good”?
Being present to myself is a decent starting place to a good moment.
Is it only good moments that are worthy of a spot on this necklace of life? Or, when I look back on each moment, will some shimmer more brightly than others? Can I consider the dull and tarnished moments as “good” as the others? Yes, I can.
Because in all of those moments — even the dull, mistake-riddled ones — I was myself.
Being present to this moment, to myself in this moment, means not looking back at the previous moments with self judgement — not weighing out and judging one as being “good” and another as being “bad.” Those moments existed. And I existed in those moments. That is enough.
I this moment, I am sitting at my computer, attempting to answer this question. When my mind wanders off in flights of fancy, I pull it back to my breath.
My breath is always with me. As long as I’m alive. And so I can always return to it. A good breath is any breath at all because it means that I’m alive. A breath is a moment. And a breath is the sound YHWH, which means that “I am” is on every breath. And that means that God is on every breath. And God and good are really the same words. And all breaths are good and therefore all moments are good moments. And a good life is just a series of good moments strung together like pearls on a necklace. And so it is that this is a good life. And so it is that the breath is the most important thing needed to live a good life. Breathe.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
I do remember reading books. And I do remember specific books. I do remember the smooth crisp pages of, for example, Goodnight Moon. I remember sitting on the edge of the bathtub within a hand’s reach of a roll of toilet paper as I cried through certain pages of Where the Red Fern Grows (if you know, you know). And it was at a rental beach house where I similarly cried over Bridge to Terabethia. I can remember the school librarian’s particular way of turning the pages on picture books and the resonance in my dad’s chest as he read to me on the green chair in the living room. I know that it was The Trumpet of the Swan that one of my grade school teachers was reading to us when we got to go outside to listen to the story on one of the first suitable days of spring. But, for the love of me, I cannot remember the plot of the book at all. I know that I pictured the bathroom in the house I grew up in next to in the part of Stuart Little when Stuart retrieves his mother’s wedding ring.
I’m fairly certain that it was reading Stuart Little that set me off on reading The Rescuers and The Borrowers. There’s just something about tiny creatures repurposing small household items for their own purposes. I’m sure it was that particular appeal of tiny objects that made The Toy Shop Mystery and The Doll House Mystery also enchanting.
Apparently, EB White was quite popular because I definitely remember reading Charlotte’s Web. Although I think that I really only remember the details of the plot now because I’ve read it aloud to my children as an adult.
But I don’t remember one in particular book as my favorite. It’s all just as well. It’s the way I truly do not have a favorite child.
As is made apparent in yesterday’s blog post, (which was in response to the prompt to name three books which had an impact on me) I’m more widely read now that I’m an adult.
The other three posts from this past week are quite short, but writing them spurred some breakthroughs for me about myself, life, mental health, and how to think about certain struggles.
Lastly, I thought about fear which, as an anxious person, is quite a feat in and of itself. But in the writing, I discovered a personal hack for cutting fear off at the knees in Starve Fear, Feed Joy.
A one minute audio blog of a native English speaker, spontaneous, unplanned, and bare bones.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email like this one to subscribers. Thank you!
I’m sitting here trying to narrow it down to three books. Because after all, what book that I’ve read hasn’t had an impact on me one way or the other? Isn’t that the point of reading? To be changed by it?
I’m also sitting here thinking about choosing three books that will make me look cool, or smart, or “in the know”.
And then I’m thinking about the three books I’m currently reading on paper, e-reading, and listening to.
On my e-reader: Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie Rendon. I’ve just started this, but Marcie Rendon is one of my favorite authors. Each time I’ve started a new book in her Cash Blackbear series, I feel as though I’m getting caught up with an old friend.
And, finally, I’m listening to Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence. I’m just getting into this book. I’ve also been working more seriously on my language learning right now and this book is the perfect companion to this kind of work — providing motivation for putting in the time and effort to something that doesn’t necessarily feel immediately useful.
Because certainly in this moment, those are the ones that have the greatest impact on me. Or perhaps it’s the last three that I completed?
Which were, on my e-reader, the Dreamblood duo logy by NK Jemison. (This includes The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun.) I wrote about this book in a previous post about dreaming. I definitely will be re-reading these in hard copy form. I find reading books I can engage more deeply with the text than on an e-reader.
In hardback book form: Where Rivers Part by Kao Kalia Yang. It’s a stunning memoir written in her mother’s voice. It made me a better parent and mother.
OK. This is more than three books, but books happen to be something I’m excited about. Check out my early posts with more Book Recommendations. If I wrote about them, they impacted me in some way.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
Fear is a hungry beast. I find it’s overly easy to feed its gaping maw. What do I mean by that? I mean that the society and culture that I live within is a veritable buffet of delights for fear to endlessly consume. Fear, in its turn, has a bottomless stomach and is always ready to grab a clean plate and begin its trip through the hot bar. And the cold one too.
I’ll feed it unnecessary purchases of bits and bobs I’ve seen advertised as being able to make me happier, prettier, younger, even wealthier. Fear will consume them all. And I? No happier, no prettier, no younger and perhaps a little bit poorer. And still Fear’s belly rumbles with hunger, demanding ever more time, attention, quick fixes, superficial dalliances into this and that. “You’re missing out,” he whispers into my jewel-laden ear. And I succumb. And still he devours more.
Fear holds my attention with its adrenaline and thrills, its glitter and shine, its shadows and mirrors. Caught up in the echantment of his own illusions, he pulls back a curtain to reveal his greatest weapon: death.
But, alas, Fear has overplayed his hand. For Death reminds us, “I’ll meet all of you regardless of how you spend your time. You’d do just as well to invite Fear into your heart as you would with his twin, Joy. It’s all the same to me.”
And so I pass Joy a clean plate from the buffet of earthly delights: a long stretch, a deep breath, the breeze shifting the juniper branches, a sip of clean water. And together we eat our fill. And then some.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
Does there need to be an exchange of tangible goods?
Care, food, health, love.
I was once a secret keeper. I was terrible at that job. I didn’t know which ones should be kept and which ones thrown away, whispered and carried away on the wind, which ones to bind up in my heart and which to shout out.
Needless to say, I’m a terrible judge of character.
I also spent a summer smearing cream cheese on bagels. This was before there were tip jars on counters.
My first paid job was babysitting. I probably wasn’t very good at this either. Sometimes, I suspect that parents confused “good at babysitting” with “available and cheap, relatively.” Oh, and a girl in roughly the right age range.
I even convinced myself that perhaps I really had a gift, a purpose. And so I ended up a teacher for a while.
I’ve been an assistant editor, a research assistant, a sandwich maker, a camp counselor, a guide for a group of teenagers traveling, a creator. Those are things that I’ve more or less gotten paid for.
Is getting paid a requisite for a job?
Because the job I’ve had the longest is a mother but I don’t get paid for that. I’m told it is its own reward.
I don’t get paid for this either.
Still, one must carry on. Job or no job. Paid or not. And so I do.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
I’ve been thinking off and on about this question since I read it last night. And each time, when my mind has started to wander towards figuring out how I’m going to answer it when I eventually sit down at my computer, I’ve gently tugged it back to the present moment.
Am I good at this gentle tugging? Maybe. But “good” is a relative term isn’t it? Certainly it’s something that I’m trying to practice regularly, this gentle tugging of my mind to the present moment. I don’t think that there’s a way to grade it or assess whether or not I’m “good” at it.
But even here, now, I’m sitting at my computer answering this daily prompt. My mind will start to wander towards trying to guess at what I’m “supposed” to write. My mind will wonder, “What are other bloggers writing in response to this question?”
Tug. Tug. Gently. Gently.
I can feel the keys underneath my fingertips.
Ah! The miracle that my muscles, sinew, neurons remember where to place each finger in order to get the desired result. How is it that I remember how to spell the words: memory, gentle, mind, and wander?
I might consider for a moment going down a google rabbit hole to read the science behind this process of what I’m doing here.
But, remember? Tug. Tug. Gently. Gently.
My chair is uncomfortably out of alignment from my desk and screen. I rearrange myself. The chair squeaks.
Gentle tug.
I hear the car tires on the highway outside of my house; a flare of frustration at the speed everyone seems to be driving.
Tug. Tug.
I worry. Is this enough words? Did I answer the question? Will someone read this and feel or think something?
Tug. Tug.
My feet are resting lightly on the stack of blankets under my desk. I stretch my toes.
I pull my mind back to my breath. Breathe.
This. This is what I’m good at.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
I feel as though I have a lot of distractions away from myself, a lot of competing demands, a lot of voices telling me what I should be doing, attaining, being, thinking, making, taking, giving, living, watching, fearing, hearing, seeing, feeling, having, owning, buying and all the rest of it. The work of it is learning to say no to those demands. And figuring out how to say yes to myself.
For me, this has required a lot of grace extended towards myself. It has meant allowing myself to be who I am without judgement. I try to practice this presence to myself every day. I fail a lot.
When I go for a walk. I try to just go for a walk. I pull myself back to myself again and again. This is hard for me to do because my mind is continually scanning for what might be coming next even on a walk around my own neighborhood.
But I pull my attention back to myself again and again as I walk.
The other day. I saw a bird in front of my house. It had something in its beak. Maybe it was going to take it back to build its nest.
If I had not been in a mode of slowing down, I think I would have missed seeing that bird. And then I would not have had that bird in my mind as I sat down to write this post.
If I had not slowed down to observe the bird, would the bird still exist? Would it still have built its nest if I hadn’t seen in? Probably.
But I will never know.
And so I’m glad that I slowed down, that I came back to myself to observe the bird, building its home. Now the bird lives in my head.
And on this post.
And this is what I mean by having it all.
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If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!
Rhena Writes 